More than a statue: Statue of Liberty

Alan SolomonTribune staff reporter

It's not the size. Not alone.

The Gateway Arch in St. Louis is four times taller. A standing Buddha in Japan is three times her height.

Are there statues more splendid? As art, Michelangelo's massive, magnificent "David" is justly revered. Daniel Chester French's monumental seated Lincoln has been thrilling, and humbling, Washington visitors for 80 years.

Those statues are more than statues.

Neither statue is this one.

Many years ago, on a visit to Morocco, I asked a young man in Marrakech who had given me a rather emotional briefing on local politics if there was anything I could send him from America.

If her name were "Linda, Queen of New York Harbor," she would still be something to behold, but she would not be what she is.

She would not be one of today's Seven Wonders of the World.

"Colossal statuary," her sculptor Frederic Auguste Bartholdi said, "does not consist simply in making an enormous statue. It ought to produce an emotion in the breast of the spectator."

So it did, and so it does.

From an audio tape in the Ellis Island Immigration Museum comes this, words of a man recalling his arrival from Italy:

"When I saw the Statue of Liberty--it was something beautiful. I knew I was in America."

That hasn't changed in 116 years. But there were subtle changes in what she came to represent. Before she was a statue, and before there were thoughts of immigrant waves, she was Liberty. Just Liberty.

It all began in 1865, when French historian Edouard de Laboulaye--struggling with the fall of his country's Second Republic and the re-establishment of monarchy under Napoleon III--was dining with friends and reflecting on America, which had just ended a civil war fought in great measure to abolish slavery.

Why not, he proposed, build a monument celebrating the historic friendship between the two countries and at the same time create a monument to what again must be a common commitment to liberty and democratic ideals?

(The London Times would later think it amusing that the French, who had so little liberty, would give a statue to America, which had too much. But that was the point.)

In 1871, he sent Bartholdi, an Alsatian who was present at the dinner, to New York. In the harbor, the sculptor saw an island--then named Bedloe's Island after an early Dutch colonist and home for 60 years to star-shaped Ft. Wood--and it all registered.

Sometime around 280 B.C., the ancients had built the Colossus of Rhodes, one of the original Seven Wonders, at the entrance to the port of Rhodes, south of today's Turkey. That bit of statuary history wasn't lost on Bartholdi.

"He saw this island and this fort, and he saw the buildings of Manhattan, and he was so impressed with the view," said Barry Moreno, librarian-historian for the National Park Service in New York. "He'd already decided his statue should be a gigantic statue of the Goddess of Liberty [Libertas, Roman goddess and, not incidentally, symbol of the Second Republic], and he envisioned this gigantic statue welcoming ships laden with travelers and immigrants.

"He wanted them to be impressed by this symbol of American liberty."

It was conceived and financed as a gift from the people of France--not the government of France, but its people--to the people of America. The French government didn't block it.

And so it began.

In 1876, the International Exhibition of Arts, Manufactures and Products of the Soil and Mine--the Centennial Exhibition--was held in Philadelphia. Among the exhibits: the first typewriter, an early version of Bell's miraculous telephone and a chunk of cable that eventually would suspend another miracle, the Brooklyn Bridge.

Also on display: the arm and torch from a statue that would rise in New York Harbor.

In 1877, Congress--on recommendation of Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman--agreed to allow Bedloe's Island to be the site, but it authorized no funds. The cost of the pedestal, about $250,000, eventually would come from donations by the American people.

In 1884, the statue was completed in France, then taken apart. In 1885, 214 crates aboard l'Ispere, a French navy ship, carried the pieces to the United States, to be reassembled on that pedestal.

And on Oct. 28, 1886, she was dedicated in a celebration that included not only uncountable ships, speeches and fireworks, but what probably was New York's first ticker-tape parade.

By then, France again was a republic. By then, the statue's original given name--"Liberty, Enlightening the World"--had been familiarly replaced by "Statue of Liberty."

And by then, the significance of this colossus had expanded beyond linkage between governments sharing friendship and a political philosophy.

"Among the thousands of Europeans who are daily conveyed to these hospitable shores," said M.A. Lafaivre, representing France at the dedication, "no one will pass before this glorious emblem without immediately perceiving its moral greatness and without greeting it with respect and thankfulness."

"A stream of light," said President Grover Cleveland, "shall pierce the darkness of ignorance and man's oppression until Liberty Enlightens the World."

The British, of course, still had a somewhat different take.

"It is a mistake to think the statue will increase the friendship between the two countries," sneered the London Daily Mail. "America did not want the statue. She took it because it was offered to her. When the last cannon boomed New York was richer by a remarkable statue, and that is about all."

Americans, naturally, were thrilled with this magnificent gift. But even here, there was texture.

"It is the most colossal of all statues, ancient or modern, and towers amongst them like a giant amid pigmies," puffed the Chicago Tribune. "It will stand for ages welcoming all liberty-loving people to these shores," the editorial continued, then added ominously, "and it should serve for equal warning to the turbulent, fanatical, Anarchistic brood that liberty is not license, that freedom is not destruction, and that law is not chaos."

Six months before the dedication of the Statue of Liberty, eight Chicago policeman at a labor rally would die in what would become known as the Haymarket Riot. A year after the dedication of the Statue of Liberty, four men accused in connection with affair would be hanged. Three were German immigrants. The fourth could trace his family to the Mayflower.

"Much of the evidence given at the trial," Illinois Gov. John Peter Altgeld would say in pardoning three imprisoned survivors in 1893, "was a pure fabrication."

The republic for which it stood may have still been imperfect in October 1886--but as a symbol of how we saw ourselves and of our aspirations, this new Statue of Liberty was, in every way, a triumph.

* * *

She stands slightly more that 151 feet from foot to the tip of her torch. Including the pedestal, she rises 305 feet from the ground.

Her sheathing is 31 tons of copper from the Visnes copper mine near Stavanger, Norway. The 125-ton interior iron skeleton was designed by Gustave Eiffel (his Tower came later) after earlier designs didn't work.

"Eiffel just took it on as a project for pay and never listed it as one of his great career achievements," said Moreno, the historian. "But years later, when he heard people exclaiming about the Statue of Liberty after Bartholdi died [in 1904] and how he'd made it, he said `Hey! What about me?' Then he started mentioning it."

Richard Hunt designed the 89-foot-tall pedestal, made of granite from Leete's Island, Conn. The entire structure, including a 65-foot base, stands on what is now (since 1956) Liberty Island within Ft. Wood, completed in 1811. Until 1937-- four years after the National Park Service took over administration of the statue--Bedloe's Island remained a military base, complete with mules, barracks and a jail for misbehaving personnel; remnants lasted until 1950.

The statue's shoes are Roman sandals. Around her ankles are broken shackles, representing the end of servitude.

In her left hand, she holds a tablet inscribed "July 4, 1776" in Roman numerals. In her right hand is a torch, "the Torch of Liberty," said Moreno, "to send out rays to enlighten the world."

The current torch was fabricated for the 1984-86 restoration as a replica of the 1886 original, which had been altered over the years, had deteriorated and is now on display in the pedestal lobby.

You still can't climb into it.

"People will say, `When I was a kid, I climbed to the torch,' " said Brian Feeney, spokesman for the National Parks of New York Harbor. "It's not true."

The torch has been closed since a 1916 explosion in a New Jersey munitions dump--saboteurs were suspected--left it structurally unstable.

"It's a rather difficult thing to visit anyway," said Feeney. "It's a vertical ladder that goes through the arm, and at the elbow it takes a bend and becomes very narrow . . . "

Until the interior of the statue was closed after the 9/11 attacks, visitors could walk 354 steps--22 stories--to the crown's 25 windows and peer out.

No date has been set for reopening.

"The seven spikes that come out of her crown are a halo, a classic nimbus of a Roman goddess," said Moreno. Seven, he said, was a lucky number in antiquity.

She is dressed in a stola, a variation of toga worn by upper-class Roman women.

The green color is the natural patina, which works as a protectorant. Originally the statue was dark brown, but began changing in the 1890s. People were alarmed. Not any more. It will stay green; scraping it off would thin the copper and weaken the structure.

The statue was closed for renovations in 1937-38. Floodlights were installed in 1916, improved in 1931, blacked out during World War II, further improved in 1976 and much improved in 1986 as part of the $80 million restoration financed by public contributions.

"The skeletal structure was just rotting," said Feeney. The outside stayed in place as the inside was updated, all beneath the tallest freestanding scaffolding ever built.

Over the years it has been the scene of takeovers and demonstrations by Native Americans, advocates of women's and gay rights, Puerto Rican nationalists, pro- and anti-Shah Iranians and anti-war protesters.

The island was closed again for 100 days, from Sept. 11 until Dec. 20, 2001.

Today, said Feeney, the Statue of Liberty is in great shape.

"It's stood more than a hundred years," said Feeney, "and it'll stand for hundreds more."

It has already stood more than twice as long as the Colossus of Rhodes.

"A Wonder," said Moreno, "should have a profound impact on its population. It's not a Wonder unless people are in awe of it--and that's why, in antiquity, the Colossus of Rhodes was a Wonder."

This Statue is a Wonder. It is awesome. And it stands for something awesome.